iPeople
by Jynto
Summary: Ten years ago, Apple released the iPhone, which changed our world forever. Now they are working on something bigger – a secret project to reinvent the human body. But the Doctor has seen it all before! On a parallel Earth, the biggest company in the world abused its market dominance to create CYBERMEN. So when Bill's AirPods begin to malfunction, he knows Apple is up to something…
1. First Chapter - Jony and Tim

_Cupertino, California, Earth – 29 June 2017_

A man in plain clothes strolled down a corridor with purpose. It was a long corridor, seamlessly built around a subtle curve in the building, so without even having to think about it, his footsteps traced out a section of an enormous circle. The length of his strides fell perfectly in sync with the the widths of the windows, so that each giant pane of glass was exactly three of his paces; the rhythm of his footsteps was echoed in the very architecture the building. But this was not surprising, given that he was the one who designed it.

The man was Jonathan "Jony" Ive, a person who believed in removing unnecessary letters as much he believed in the simplicity of great design. His favourite colour was white. His favourite font was Helvetica. And his favourite place to be was an empty room, painted white from floor to ceiling, in which he could only listen to his own voice. The new building had plenty of these, but also it contained the office of his supervisor and friend, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple Inc.

The building, known as Apple Park, had been built around an enormous ring shape, wider from side to side than the Empire State Building was tall. The entire O2 arena could fit within the inside perimeter of the ring, with room to spare. Its construction had attracted a lot of press coverage recently. And because of its enormous size, neo-futurist style, and the fact it looked like it could have fallen from the skies into this humdrum suburb, the tech press had dubbed it the 'Spaceship Campus'.

This architectural masterpiece was going to be the new headquarters of Apple. And Jony was proud to say it was the single biggest product that he'd ever had the privilege of designing (even if he did have to share some of the credit with Lord Norman Foster). This, and the machines it housed, were the sum total of his life's work with Apple.

As he reached the far end of the corridor, he rested his hand on a sturdy metal door handle. But it wasn't just any door handle; it was custom-built, sculpted from the finest quality precision-milled aluminium, more minimalist installation than building fitting. He'd made perfectly sure whilst designing it that it would be the best door handle money could buy. He'd told himself, many times, that the only constraint to its design perfection was the human hands that operated it. So if he wanted to design a better handle, he'd have to begin by designing a better hand.

That would come in due time.

But for now, he just needed to get through this meeting with his boss, the way he'd done so many times before in product releases throughout the years. Those had been in a different building of course, but the emotions surrounding them remained the same. And of course, Tim Cook hadn't always been his boss back then. Jony fondly remembered working for Steve Jobs. The was until his mortal body succumbed to an illness in 2011.

Death. That had been the inspiration for so much of this project, without which the Spaceship Campus would not have existed. There was still a lot that he regretted. But Jony made a point never to dwell on the past, focusing only on what lay ahead. Because as much as he couldn't deny the new building was close to perfection as humanly possible, it was only the beginning of a greater undertaking.

When Tim beckoned him into the office, Jony could see the desk that usually held an iMac was instead covered in a couple of dozen iPad Pro devices. Even more of them were strewn upon the floor. Every one of obsessively engineered 1 2.9-inch tablets was showing a major world city in Apple Maps. London was on one of them, Beijing on another, New York, old York, Rome, Edinburgh. There was even one in the far corner showing a picture of Bristol.

When he spoke to Tim, it was with a seductively serene English accent, seemingly unaffected by 20 years of living in the States.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"Nothing that can't wait," he said gesturing towards a seat.

"You know, you could get that done with half as many devices if you used multitasking."

"Fool," he said in his slow Alabama drawl. "I'll use as many iPads as I can, because I'm Tim Cook."

"Yes Master," said Jony, taking the seat.

"Good. So what is it you wanted to tell me?"

"It's about Project Titan," he said, slowing down his speech to match Tim's. "I've double-checked the units myself, Master. They're ready for the first beta test."

"That's great," said Tim, swivelling in his chair whilst stroking a white iPad Mini that lay on his lap. "And to think, people out there were convinced we were building a car!"

And he laughed, a sick, villainous laugh. Jony was sure this was the reason the board of directors never considered him for CEO material. He just couldn't laugh like Steve and Tim did.

"Well, to be fair, Master, we did order a lot of things that looked like car parts."

"And you say they're ready for deployment?" Tim relied absentmindedly.

"Not yet, Master. Just the testing at the moment."

His boss frowned just a little at this.

"That's not good enough if we plan to release in a holiday quarter."

Tim's ice blue eyes were practically burning into him; he was being Cooked.

"But why can't it be next year, Master?"

"Because unit sales have been even higher than expected," he said. "The iPhone 7 continues to be the most popular product we've ever sold."

"You say that every year," Jony said.

Tim continued unabated, sounding as though he was rehearsing for a keynote speech.

"At the same time, we're building an incredible amount of momentum behind the best ever line of wearable products that we've ever shipped. WatchOS continues to be an industry-leading smartwatch platform, with the highest customer sat for the third year in a row. And AirPods have revolutionised the way we listen to music on the go. Our next wearable product needs to maintain this momentum if it's to truly move the industry."

Jony could tell by this that Tim was stressed right now. He always used his product pitches and corporate-speak as a way to de-stress himself.

"Oh, It will," said Jony. "But first I will need some live test subjects."

"That won't be easy," said Tim. Then, with a decisive nod, he said: "So how about this? I'll redirect company resources to fast-track the beta, if you can keep us on target for a September release date. I'll expect full accountability from you, Jony. Does that sound like a deal?"

Jony knew this would put the new product on schedule to be unveiled at around the same time as the 10th anniversary iPhone. Competing for stage time with Apple's most popular product was a risky move, but Tim knew what he was doing. He dared not question him.

"Yes Master, of course. Thank you, master."

Tim grinned.

"And now, can I just run something by you?"

Jony nodded, then proceeded to sit tight for the next ten minutes while Tim bored him with the latest information about supply chain logistics. It was very important, of course, but he didn't have time for this. He wished he was back in his white room.

When they got back on the subject of Project Titan at the end of the meeting, Jony asked Tim:

"Is there anything you'd like me to change about the design of the product?"

"No," said Tim. "My CEO's instinct tells me you've made it as good as humanly possible."

"So, still room for improvement?" said Jony.

"Yes..." said Tim, and he let out a laugh. Jony tried to copy him, but his bad guy laugh was inadequate.

When he left the CEO's office at 9:41 that morning, he did so with a smile upon his face. It had been a long time coming, but Tim Cook had given him exactly what he wanted: the opportunity to test his creation on live test subjects.

Before he'd even got halfway down the corridor, he decided to show Tim how much he appreciated him by sending him a few seconds of heart rate data, straight from his Apple Watch. His heart was beating very fast now; that much was true, but it didn't say anything about the context of the data.

The reality was that Jony Ive knew he was one step closer to recreating a world in his own image, and it would be a world without Tim Cook. All in due time, he thought.

For now, he just considered himself fortunate to have worked on so many great products at Apple. iPod... iPhone... iPad... and now iPeople.

* * *

AN: I just want to make it clear to y'all that Jony Ive is **not** an OC based on myself, even though our names are similar. (Like, WTF? It's just Jonty Levine with fewer letters!) Despite this, he is a real person who you can look up. His designs have been on basically every Apple product since the 90s, including the computer I am typing this on now.

If you're waiting for a chapter to update, I might recommend watching the 2-part episode beginning with Rise of the Cybermen (available on Netflix in the UK, Amazon Prime in the US). I still think it is hands-down the best Cybermen episode of Nu-Who. But of course, this story will make perfect sense if you haven't seen it.

Next chapter will have Bill and the Doctor in it. iPromise!


	2. Chapter 3G - Bill and the Doctor

AN: Was thinking of posting this yesterday, but since we're not getting a Christmas special this year (maybe not ever?) I decided to hold it off till today. Happy Christmas!

* * *

 _Bristol, England, Earth – 30 June 2017_

There were two types of people's in Bill Potts's life: those who picked up the phone within seconds, and the ones who never answered, no matter how urgent the call. Unfortunately for her, the Doctor was one of the latter, except that rather than disappoint her with an answer phone, the phone just kept ringing, and ringing, and ringing...

She had been pacing down the road outside her flat for ten minutes now, silently begging for the old Time Lord to pick up. Two buses had been and gone already, and her brand new iPhone 7 was running out of battery, not that it had that much to begin with. She took the phone away from her ear to check the time. Quarter to one. Her seminar would be starting in under 15 minutes.

Bill placed the phone back to her ear and managed to resist checking the time again. Maybe if she also had one of those Apple Watches, she could listen to a dial tone _and_ watch the clock at the same time.

The tone _purr-purr_ ed in her ear for what must have been the million billionth time, until at last it was cut off mid-purr, and the Doctor answered in his brusque Scottish accent.

"Do you have to call? I'd rather you just texted."

Bill was caught off-guard and barely managed to stifle a laugh. The Doctor of all people was the last person to take up texting, WhatsApp, or any form of communication invented later than the 1960s. For that matter, he probably wasn't receiving this call on anything newer than his old-fashioned rotary phone, which was even older than the Doctor looked.

More to the point, how did that thing receive text messages? Would it go through to a telegraph machine if she tried texting him? She made a mental note to try that some time. The Doctor seemed like exactly the sort of person who'd own one of those machines.

"Um, yeah Doctor, it is kind of urgent."

"Why? Did something happen? It's never usually urgent with you."

"Not yet," she said. "It's just that I'm..." she picked her words carefully, "about to be running late for something. Would it be alright if you picked me up in the TARDIS?"

"Oh, now let me see," said the Doctor in a tone that was bordering on sarcasm. "I have a machine capable of traversing the entire cosmos – everything there ever was and ever will be – and you need me for a time-travelling taxi because you're late for a lecture?"

He was pretending to sound annoyed, but Bill knew him well enough that she could tell he was actually smiling.

"It's a seminar actually," she said. "But pretty much, yeah."

"Oh, all right then. I'll be there in a few!" said the Doctor, who hung up before Bill could ask to clarify if he meant minutes or hours.

Meanwhile in the TARDIS, the Doctor had just put the phone down when he heard Nardole shout from the other room.

"Is that the TARDIS phone you're using?" he said in a disapproving, almost parental tone.

As far as Nardole was concerned, using the built-in telephone for anything other than utmost emergencies was only a step away from getting full-on wanderlust and flying into the next millennium. The funny little humanoid could be such a drag sometimes.

"No, I was talking to myself!" the Doctor replied, in what was probably his most flippant lie so far that day.

"Okay," said Nardole. "But if must... _talk to yourself_ , might I advise that you stay on Earth to do it?"

"Of course I am staying on Earth. What do you take me for?" the Doctor said, stomping his feet on the TARDIS floor. "This is me, right now, standing on Earth."

"Good," he replied, "because your tea's ready."

"Well, it'll have to wait."

"For what?"

The Doctor's strode across the console room and stroked the central console. He was almost about to start the time rotor when he hesitated at the last moment.

"Nothing. I'll be right down," he shouted.

Bill's request _had_ been urgent, but not so urgent that he couldn't enjoy a bit of tea first.

Two hours later – but only twenty seconds by Bill's reckoning, such was the magic of time travel – the familiar soundscape of the TARDIS began filling her ears, and the blue box itself materialised two steps in front of her. Bill took a quick two-step shuffle forwards – a clever little 'life-hack' she'd devised to save time when she needed the Doctor to pick her up in a hurry.

The street scene faded from view and was replaced by the cool blue lighting of the console room.

It occurred to her that she hadn't really needed to hurry. It was a time machine after all.

She was standing halfway between the door and the main console where the Doctor was standing (not sitting, since he couldn't swallow his pride about the inconvenient placement of the chairs) and looking very proud of his landing.

"Cheers, Doctor," she said. "I wouldn't normally have asked, but I couldn't reschedule the driving lesson with enough time. And then there was this physics seminar I just _had_ to go to, but it's on the other side of town. So, I thought maybe the driving instructor would maybe let me... take the car there? Yeah, that was never gonna work."

"Why? Are my lessons not good enough for you?"

It took Bill a few seconds to realise he meant the physics, not driving.

"I never said that."

"Then what do you need any other seminars for? I already know everything."

The Doctor was being facetious, and Bill knew it. She usually tried _not_ to indulge him at times like these. _Usually_. This was not one of those times.

"Perspective," said Bill. "Don't get me wrong. Your tutoring is good and all, but I'm pretty sure scientists won't get to understand the things you're teaching me for another, I dunno, five hundred years."

" _Earth_ scientists," he corrected.

"Well except perhaps professor Morton, but only because no one knows what she's saying half the time. Anyway, point is, if I pull out this knowledge for an exam, or write it into my dissertation, people are gonna have some pretty serious questions."

"Oh? Like what?"

"Well, If I'm not lucky, they'll probably just fail me on the spot. And if I am _really_ lucky, they'd interrogate me and dissect my brain. Wait, did I say lucky? I meant the other way round."

"Ah. I get it. So you need a seminar to teach you how stupid people think."

"Well, no..."

"Oh, so it's how to _talk_ to stupid people then?"

"They're not stupid. They're just humans. They don't know about polarised neutrons because they haven't been told what they are."

"My point still stands," he said, folding his arms.

"Which reminds me, Doctor. What am I supposed to do with all this undiscovered knowledge?"

The Doctor stopped pacing and considered this for a moment.

"Same thing as most people do after leaving university. Get yourself a steady job at an accounting firm. Mention it in interviews as proof of your 'transferable skills', but don't mention too much – nobody likes a showoff."

"Is that it?"

"You could do a lot worse."

"What, worse than serving chips in the uni canteen?" Bill said with a smile.

The Doctor scratched his chin.

"I suppose you _could_ always, I don't know, reverse-engineer a piece of alien technology, deploy it for the mass market and make yourself an overnight billionaire. But only if you're a boring person with no imagination."

"Wait. Does that ever actually happen?"

"No. I mean, from time to time people might manage to salvage something from an alien ship. But they hardly ever manage to reverse engineer it, much less find a consumer use for it. "

"I dunno," said Bill. "I could do with a flat that's bigger on the inside. Given what our group has had to downsize to, after... y'know?"

"You mean the house that tried to eat you?"

Bill tensed a little as she recalled the embarrassment of having to introduce the Doctor to her friends.

"Yes, _Grandpa_. I remember that house. You were there. Remember?"

But the Doctor had stopped listening again. He was back to pacing around, and he seemed itching to get his TARDIS off the ground.

"So, when do you want to arrive at the seminar?"

"Well ideally... half an hour ago. That way I can impress my tutors by turning up half an hour early."

"Alrighty."

The Doctor threw the final switch and sent the TARDIS leaping into the time vortex.

Bill felt a sensation akin to an elevator going upwards very quickly.

"Wait, don't you need to find out _where_ we're going?"

"I'm sure we'll figure it out as we go," the Doctor said with a wave of his hand.

"Or you know, I can like, point it out on Google Maps?"

This reminded her to look for something in her coat pocket.

"No no, I'm sure _she'll_ know where to find it," he said, lovingly stroking the main console. He looked up at Bill to see she was frantically checking her pockets. "Have you forgotten something?"

"My AirPods," said Bill. "I think I might've left them at home."

"Are they important?" he said as the room tilted slightly to the left.

"Kind of. I can't listen to my podcasts without them."

The Doctor threw back a switch and the motion of the TARDIS faltered. She felt the console room shift to a standstill.

"Go back and get them," the Doctor said in a tone that could only be described as parental. "I'll wait."

He slammed down the lever and sent the TARDIS screeching into reverse.

When they landed, Bill opened the TARDIS doors and dashed back to the flat. She took the steps two at a time, pausing only to pull her phone out of her pocket when it made a noise, then swiped aside the notifications. She hadn't yet figured out how to turn those off in iOS 11.

It didn't take her long to find the two stark white earpieces that lay on the shelf by the coat stand. Normally she'd have kept them in her coat pocket, but she had needed to charge them up this morning in their little white box. And like a klutz, she had forgotten to put them back afterwards. It was frustrating, to say the least, but she'd just have to work charging them into her daily routine from now on, like she did with cleaning rotas and university emails.

Better hurry back to the TARDIS then, because if a life-size blue police box stayed outside her door for too long, someone was bound to start asking questions.

Actually, come to think of it, when had that ever happened? She'd been travelling with the Doctor for several months now and no one to her knowledge had pointed out the TARDIS as unusual or out of place. Maybe there was some alien technology that kept it from being noticed. That was perhaps something to ask the Doctor about when she got the chance.

She beamed a smile at him as she re-opened the door to the TARDIS.

"Found them!" she said, holding up the little white box.

The Doctor meanwhile was unravelling the cable around an old and very dusty looking wearable device.

"Well for what it's worth," he said, "if you didn't manage to find your Air-thingies, I might have let you borrow these."

"What even are those?" said Bill.

They looked like something stolen from a recording studio in the golden age of jazz.

"They're my first ever pair of Stereophones, at least in this regeneration anyway. I've only had them for the last fifty years."

"They look _ancient_."

The Doctor furrowed his brow.

"Humans don't know the meaning of that word. But anyway, they still work. And for what it's worth, I've barely used them. Was going through a bit of a mid-life crisis at the time I bought them."

Bill took the headphones, willing at least to humour the Doctor. Her eyes were drawn to the far end of the cable that was dangling from them, which bore a familiar looking round plug.

"Oh my God," said Bill, "For what it's worth, these might have actually been compatible with my old phone."

It was the same round plug that had been on every single pair of earphones she'd owned since the ones that came with her first minidisc player.

"Really? Why not the new phone."

"The headphone port. My iPhone 7 doesn't have one."

"Eh?"

This revelation seemed to puzzle the Doctor.

He knew of course that the 3.5 mm headphone jack wouldn't become fully obsolete until direct-to-mind audio caught on in the late 2080s. Had things simply shifted as they do? Or had something else happened to cause this change in the timeline?

"Yeah, this phone is pretty much wireless-only, unless you get a dongle. That's what my cousin Kelsey said – who by the way is a huge tech nerd who is obsessed with Apple products. Actually recommended I get one of these because I wouldn't have to worry about tangling my headphones up. Though it might have been a good idea to mention the wireless ones are sold separately."

"Say that again? You lost me at _dongle_ ," the Doctor said.

"Oh, nothing much," said Bill, sliding an AirPod out of its casing. "Just the fact that my cousin never said these things cost _a hundred and sixty quid_ on top of what you usually pay for an iPhone."

"Really? Then you need better cousins," said the Doctor. "And what's so special about these Air-thingies, besides them being wireless and all?"

"Well, they pair really easily."

Bill showed how seamlessly they connected to her phone, and to each other. If you took one of them out of your ear, then the other one would automatically stop playing.

"I also think there are microphones in the stalks," she added.

It was weak brag after all, and she hadn't really expected the Doctor to be impressed by this. He'd been to the future and seen more advanced things than a simple pair of wireless headphones.

And yet there was something about these devices that intrigued the Doctor. Perhaps there was more to them than met the eye, because he took one of them in his hands and twirled it between his fingers

"Something about them feels off for the time period," he mumbled. "And I can't help thinking I've seen them before. Even the name sounds familiar. Hmm, AirPods... HairPods?... _EarPods_! Yes – I remember it now! I've seen something almost exactly like these. And it did _not_ end well for the customer."

He put the single AirPod down on the stairs and took a step back from it. Then he looked Bill in the eyes and his tone became stern.

"Bill," he said. "Don't use those. Take the other one off because I'm warning you now: don't put them near your ears if you value your humanity."

"Why? They're just headphones."

"Sure, they might be _just headphones_ ," he said. "Or are they a mind-control device sent by a trillion dollar company to control the population?"

"Not a big fan of Apple then?"

"Look, I didn't say that. I'm just saying the last time I ran into something like these, they turned a country – nay, an entire world – into mindless, metal slaves!"

Bill gave the Doctor a puzzled look. She'd always been aware that some people who disliked Apple products on mere principle alone, and also made a point of telling people about it. But until now, she hadn't taken the Doctor for one of them.

"Okay, I get it. You don't like Apple."

"What? Don't be silly," said the Doctor, who went back to pacing around the TARDIS. "I'm not talking about your Californian fruit company here. This was a parallel world, ruled over by the likes of Cybus Industries."

"Cybus Industries?" Bill repeated, as though she'd never heard the name before, which she hadn't. Had she?

"And no, you haven't heard that name before," said the Doctor.

And with that, he began to explain the circumstances of that world, of how a monstrous industrial conglomerate had grown, fuelled by the ego of a depraved visionary called John Lumic, the man who desired to cheat death. Cybus Industries had monopolies in many different fields, from finance to airships, from news to construction. But the masterstroke of it all had been a smart wearable device called the EarPod.

Hundreds of millions of these devices sat in the ears of loyal Cybus customers, where they would beam a personalised news feed directly into their brains. People seemed to enjoy the convenience of being told what to think, and paying for yearly upgrades was simply par for the course. Then one day the company revealed its true intentions and rounded up their customers like cattle. Cyber-conversion facilities around the world had been tasked with cutting open their heads and putting their brains in metal shells. It was the ultimate upgrade. Each formerly human individual had his, her, or their body replaced by a flawless machine – a Cyberman.

"But why would people do this? I mean, I'd never let them upgrade me."

"You wouldn't have to," said the Doctor. "These EarPods were controlling their minds. People didn't know what was happening until it was too late, and they woke up in metal bodies. Most, I imagine, would have been quite annoyed about this, but Cybus had a solution for that as well – by turning off their emotions."

"You're kidding."

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" said the Doctor.

"And they just... walked around in metal bodies without feeling anything?"

"An entire army of them, yes."

Bill took the other AirPod from her ear and slid it into the little white box, which she turned over and over in her hands. It looked cheap, but she knew all too well that it wasn't. And in the back of her mind, she couldn't help but know there had to something more to it, some kind of magic trick that justified its high price.

"So if this thing presumably has some kind of mind control device..." The Doctor nodded. "They'd have to be hiding a lot of alien technology in a very small case..."

The Doctor nodded again.

"And Doctor, I think I've figured out what makes them so expensive."

* * *

AN: I'm not sure why I'm investing this much effort into a fic with the least shippable Doctor, the most overlooked companion, and a plot that doesn't revolve around character interactions, based on some tech gripes of mine that haven't been topical in over a year.

I suppose it's because I can't just abandon a project, would never leave it unfinished once I've put it out in public. I'm committed myself to finishing it, whatever the cost. And dammit, I am going to finish this mess and hope it will be great!

Plus, the fandom really needs more Bill. She only got one season, and the awesomeness that was Season 10 will be overshadowed in the long run by Whittaker's first ten episodes, and I'm not altogether comfortable with that.

Chapter 3GS is in development...


	3. Chapter 3GS - The Doctor and Bill

The time rotor idled quietly in the background.

"Come again?"

"I've figured out why these AirPods are so expensive," said Bill. "Because yeah, a hundred and sixty pounds? Yeah, that's like, eighty quid per... Pod, even though my last Bluetooth only cost – what – forty?"

"Go on then. I'm listening," said the Doctor, as if they were discussing a particularly hard physics problem.

"Duh! It's because it's made by Apple."

At this, the Doctor rolled his eyes. Within a few more seconds, he had begun to think aloud.

"Or, I don't suppose – and I'm just thinking out loud here – that if you were trying to mass-produce a mind control device and put them in the hands of millions, you might be willing pass those costs onto the consumer?"

Bill hadn't thought of this, but she wasn't going to admit it to the Doctor, knowing full well that most of his brilliant ideas were only made up on the fly.

Besides, _her_ argument made a lot more sense. Of course the AirPods were expensive for what they were, but there was nothing particularly sinister about that. Apple simply charged however much they wanted because most people just think a product with a high price tag is better for some reason. Herself included, if she were truly honest.

Okay, maybe that was a bit sinister, but not _world-endingly_ sinister. The Doctor couldn't see that because he was paranoid by nature. No, not nature – _nurture_. He'd just gotten used to thinking this way because he'd fought in a time war. And he had a time machine that deliberately took him on sightseeing trips to the most turbulent parts of history.

As such, Bill couldn't blame the Doctor for his paranoia – she really couldn't. It was nothing more than a product of his lifestyle. But could he just let his guard down and _chill_ for once?

Bill cocked her eyebrow, and threw the Doctor's question right back at him:

"Then surely Apple would make them cost _less_ so more people would buy them?" She felt rather pleased with this on-the-fly response, even if it somewhat contradicted her previous one. "Plus, I think you're being a tiny bit paranoid," she added, rather more defensively.

"But how many times have I been paranoid and ended up being right?"

Bill had lost count at five, but she wasn't going to say it out loud.

"They're just headphones," she said instead.

"Yes, and the TARDIS is _just_ a police box. The weeping angels are _just_ statues. And the Vashta Nerada are _just_ shadows. _Never_ be deceived by what something looks like."

"Oh yeah, that reminds me," said Bill. "I was gonna ask about how the TARDIS does it's..." she began, not quite knowing how to finish that sentence. "You know, like, people don't notice a police box from 1960-something when they're walking down the street in 2017! Is there a reason for that?"

"Well, _you_ noticed."

"I meant everyone besides me," Bill replied, not realising the Doctor had meant this as a compliment.

"It's for exactly one reason," said the Doctor. "Well, two actually. First is that humans are creatures with tiny, inefficient brains, who barely take notice of the things that happen all around them. Second is the perception filter on the TARDIS's exterior, which enhances the natural ability of humans to overlook things. I use perception filters to hide all my things I don't want people to touch – the TARDIS, my fob watch, the pool table..."

He glanced over his shoulder to an empty spot where nothing stood. Bill followed his eyes to the location of the pool table, before realising he was joking.

"There is no pool table there," she chided.

"Yeah, well there _could_ be," the Doctor said with a playful sneer.

"No, see, that joke doesn't work on me. 'Cause if there was an invisible pool table, I'd have surely bumped into it at least once?"

"Why? People don't do that with the TARDIS. Even clumsy kiddies who collide with lamp posts automatically steer clear of the invisible blue box. Why? Some deeply buried instinct in their monkey brains senses an obstacle and tells them to avoid it. So you see, human minds are capable of extraordinary feats when it comes to convincing themselves there's nothing dangerous or exciting to see – on their own planet, no less! You remember the Battle of Canary Wharf?"

"No."

"Exactly."

"Doctor, that doesn't make sense."

"Exactly!"

The Doctor never did get around to explaining what was meant by that, but Bill had already put it out of her mind by the time she arrived in the quiet seminar room, an hour and a half before it was due to start. The TARDIS had overshot by an hour.

There was no one using the room though, so she decided to grab a coffee from the vending machine and spend the next 90 minutes studying. She barely remembered the seminar from last week, so she opened her laptop and examined the notes she'd made, which looked like complete gibberish as usual. Everything she'd learned had managed to seep through her brain like a sieve, in just one week – it wasn't fair! No wonder the Doctor thought human minds were inefficient.

"Valence quarks..." she muttered. It was a woefully outdated model, but one still needed to learn it to be a physicist in today's world.

After ten minutes of trying to study and getting nowhere, she decided that maybe some music would help her concentrate. In an abundance of caution, Bill had agreed not to use the AirPods, or at least to be cautious about using them, but 80 minutes felt like an awfully long time to spend without music. Maybe if she studied in silence for the next 20 minutes, she could reward herself with a nice Youtube video afterwards, or maybe even five minutes of a podcast. No wait, that would also require the AirPods. _This is stupid!_

Without even thinking, she took out the little white box and flipped the lid open.

For some reason, it felt satisfying to open the box. And to slide each AirPod out of its tube-shaped enclosure was equally satisfying.

Ignoring the Doctor's warning, she put them on anyway. He wouldn't be here to tell her off for it. And besides, it wasn't like she had much choice – none of her old headphones worked without an adapter.

Halfway through the first song though, she felt a tiny bad about it, so decided to compromise by only wearing one of them. So she took the other one out. No sooner than she did that, the music stopped.

Oops, Bill forgot that they did that sometimes. She tried to remember how to start it up again. Double-tap? Did that do it? She double-tapped the other one, only to find that she'd summoned Siri by accident.

"Um... play?" said Bill.

Siri said nothing, and proceeded to play the music from where it had left off.

Before she knew it, she had blitzed her way through all four pages, googled the bits she'd been stuck with, and written an additional page of notes. She was as ready for this seminar as she'd ever be.

Good timing too, as she'd just seen Professor Morton walk through the door, put her laptop bag on a spare table, and drag the Flipchart easel to the centre of the room.

Bill noticed that she was wearing AirPods of her own.

It was at this moment when she felt something new for the professor – not a crush (she'd had enough crushes on women to know this _wasn't_ one of them), but definitely something approaching a friendship. And as silly as that sounded, it might just have been because they both wore AirPods.

As such, she no longer saw Professor Morton as _'that lecturer I don't get on with'_ , but instead as _'a fellow user of Apple products'_. They had at least had that much in common.

She briefly considered mentioning this to the Doctor next time that she saw him, but there was no way he'd understand. He wasn't much of an Apple fan, after all...

* * *

AN: For what it's worth, double-tapping on an AirPod can be customised to do other things besides just summoning Siri. But that wasn't true as of 2017, when this particular chapter is set. Oh, and other chapters will take place in the far future year of 2019 (or from our perspective, the present!)


	4. Chapter 4 - Missy

For some unknown reason, the Doctor had managed to acquire a reputation as a technophobe, which he thought was unfair. Despite his greying hair and the general air of grouchiness, the Doctor really had quite the soft spot for machines. He'd _always_ been fond of machines, especially the ones he could understand.

The sonic probe (or _screwdriver_ , as he liked to call it) was one machine whose inner workings he knew so intimately, he could probably build a new one out of scrap metal if the situation demanded it.

The TARDIS was another machine he understood more and more deeply with every new day that they travelled together. She never stopped revealing new secrets, and each journey seemed to reveal a whole new side to her that he never knew was there before... even though it was a bit unfair to call her a 'machine'.

But perhaps the Doctor's favourite machine in the world right now was the Quantum Fold Chamber, specifically its door, and for one reason only. It kept his prisoner on one side while allowing the Doctor to come and go as he pleases. No matter what happened in the next 900 years, he'd sleep soundly, knowing that Missy was safely contained.

"Doctor, Doctor," came the Time Lady's simpering voice from the floor as he walked in. "I am so fed up of just – _hanging about_ in this same old room of yours, I actually think I'm turning into a pair of curtains!"

"Pull yourself together," he said, supplying the punchline.

That got a smile out of her.

It wasn't often he indulged Missy's playful side, and he could potentially live to regret it. But then again, acting friendly every now and then might make it easier to get information out of her.

"You're probably wondering why I'm in here, so I'll cut to the chase."

"Not really, but do go on."

"I... need your help," he said, pacing the room, "with these. What do you know about them?"

The Doctor leaned over to the floor where Missy sat and offered her an AirPod.

The Time Lady took one look at it, snorted with derision when she saw what it was, before leaning back her head and cackling for a good ten seconds.

"What is it then?" asked the Doctor once her bouts of childish laughter had subsided, to which Missy replied without hesitation:

"A musical instrument."

"You sure?" he said, the flatness of his voice seeming to indicate that funny time was over.

"I've seen these before, Doctor. In the Angelifold Cluster," she said. "It makes the most hypnotically beautiful sound if you play it right, instant death if you play it wrong."

She held the white plastic device in front of her lips as if it were a flute, and gave an appropriately long dramatic pause before whistling a few bars of a song she knew.

The Doctor thought it sounded rather nice.

"Is that so?" he said, maintaining a serious composure in spite of her (surprisingly impressive) rendition of 'ResuRection' by the Russian electronica/dance duo PPK, but he already knew what the answer was going to be.

"Obviously not, you silly fool," said Missy. "But go on then. If you want my _serious_ answer, then here it is: this is a drug delivery capsule from the Jasprose Quadrant with a street value of between a trillion and ten trillion megacredits. If you or anyone else is caught alive with one of these things then... woe betide you if it isn't already cracked open. The Jasprosian mafia will pursue and kill fifty generations of your descendants for the chance to get it back. Or so I'm told."

"You made that one up too."

"Did I? I do believe my informant has been telling me porkie pies! But don't worry, Doctor. I'm sure you'll get it right on the third try."

"Aren't I the one who's supposed to be saying that?"

"Right you are, Doctor!" Missy said while brandishing the AirPod at him. "So if you're too thick to understand sarcasm, then I might as well say it bluntly. Doctor, the device you've just given me – what I am holding in my hand right now – is a weapon."

The Doctor replied by flexing an attack eyebrow.

"I'm listening."

"Thousands of tiny bomb capsules like this one were disguised as sea crustaceans from the Planet Torus. So once the weapon wiggles its way into the digestive tract of its intended victim, it'll wait exactly 57 minutes and 24 seconds before going KABOOM!"

" _Is that so?_ " asked the Doctor, raising the other eyebrow.

"No Doctor, are you a _child?_ These are obviously bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. And stuffed with mind control circuits cobbled together from Cybus schematics that slipped through the Void. They're being sold right now to an unsuspecting public by a fruit company intent on meeting their first-quarter sales targets and turning their wealthiest customers into off-brand Cybermen."

There was silence. Then:

"How did you know that?" the Doctor asked, lowering his voice to a whisper.

"Oh, so you _do_ know?" said Missy. For the first time in this conversation, her tone of voice inferred a modicum of respect for him. "Not just a pretty face then, are you, Doctor?"

"I try my best."

"Ah, but did you know they were vulnerable to flattery and the words 'Hey Siri'?"

"No. But I was at the Battle of Canary Wharf. So I know the originals. And yeah, I kind of figured they would have come in through the Void."

"Clever boy!" said Missy with an almighty grin, before she gasped in mock indignation and covered her mouth in embarrassment. "Oh goodness, I'm _ever so sorry!_ No, I didn't think... isn't that... that's what _she_ used to call you."

The Doctor couldn't figure out who that would be. The confusion must have shown on his face because Missy continued:

"Dear me, Doctor. So many companions, so many years. You don't even remember their names!"

Despite the Time Lady's attempts to tease him, the Doctor knew he hadn't forgotten anyone. He just couldn't recall having travelled with a person who'd used that particular phrase, or at least not directed at him.

What did it matter though? Missy was presumably just saying this to wind him up. Such behaviour was very much routine for her, so he ignored it and went back to what he actually came here to talk about.

"About these things then," he said, holding up the other AirPod. "Tell me everything you know."

"And _why_ would I do _that_?" Missy said in the manner of a petulant child.

"You said it yourself. The people behind them are planning an _invasion_. And I'm not just going to stand back and let it happen!"

"Oh, you're so haughty when you have a planet to save. What I meant to say, Doctor, is why would I help _you?"_

At this, the Doctor looked taken aback.

"I spared your life!"

"You were going to _kill me!"_

"But I _didn't_ though."

"No, but you _almost_ did."

"I was _asked_ to kill you."

"And you showed up to do it? Even after I pinky-swore, with _no take-backsies,_ that I'd at least _try_ and be good from now on? Rude!"

"Well you can now!" he said. "Be good! This is your _chance_. Take it!"

"Well now I don't want to," she pouted.

"Why not?"

" _Because I don't want to!"_

The Doctor made a sharp intake of breath.

"Fine."

" _Fine!"_

And with that, she stuck out her tongue at him

"I'll just go then, shall I?"

"Yes, you do that!"

"I will," replied the Doctor, now visibly irritated. "And maybe I won't open this door again for the next, say... twenty years?"

"Oh yes you will, Doctor!" the Time Lady called over the rattling of the door. "Because you'll get lonely out there before I do in here!"

Once the rattling had stopped and the Vault door was safely sealed up behind him, the Doctor put his face in his hands and tried not to explode with anger.

As much as he hated to admit it, she was right.

* * *

AN: Two chapters in a month from me? It must be a record.

I wasn't originally planning to include Missy in this, but I just loved her banter with the Doctor so much that I couldn't not write this little exchange. Sadly, this will the first and only time she'll appear in this story. It's set pre-Extremis, so Bill wouldn't know who she is yet anyway. And given what we know Missy does later on, it's hard to imagine she'd be against what Apple is planning.

Also, in case you were wondering, none of the places she mentioned are Doctor Who canon.


End file.
